The subject matter disclosed herein relates to power plant systems and, more particularly, to working fluid sensor systems for analyzing the operation, performance, and/or efficiency of turbines and power generation systems.
Some power plant systems, for example certain nuclear, simple-cycle and combined-cycle power plant systems, employ turbines in their design and operation. Analysis of the operation and performance of some of these systems and turbines (e.g., steam turbines, low pressure steam turbines, etc.) may be assisted and/or performed by analyzing a moisture content of a working fluid (e.g., exhaust steam) in the turbine. This analysis may enable technicians and/or designers to make more informed decisions with regard to maintenance, design adjustments and plant operations (e.g., which turbines to operate when, whether operational parameters need to be adjusted for a particular turbine, whether maintenance needs to be performed for a particular turbine, etc.). In systems incorporating a Low Pressure (LP) steam turbine the measured moisture content of the LP turbine exhaust steam may be used along with data on the LP turbine exhaust pressure, LP turbine inlet pressure and LP turbine operating temperatures, to calculate the LP turbine efficiency. Therefore, it is desirable to quickly, accurately and reliably measure the moisture content within the turbine, particularly in the turbine exhaust. Some power plant systems rely on extracting and analyzing exhaust steam samples to determine a moisture content of the working fluid in the turbine. Other systems have attempted to employ optical sensors using light extinction theory to determine a moisture content of the exhaust steam. However, samples may be difficult to obtain and test, and installing, calibrating and operating optical sensors may not be economically possible or efficient. Thus, these systems may be imprecise, time consuming, technically complicated and/or not feasible.